Brazil
It is identity, stupid! Nationalism, trade, and the populist rage
by Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira* The literature on populism in the 21st century often assumes that far-right leaders draw their support from voters who have lost out to globalization. This is the case among low-skilled, white workers in Global North democracies, including the United States. But, there are also meaningful occurrences of backlash against the political establishment and […]
Taxing the super-rich to save capitalism from itself
[Usual Caveat: AI Generated translation (with slight edits) of a piece written in Italian]
The distribution of income has become topical again in recent days, and it is likely going to be one of the issues that will characterize the debate on the global governance of the economy in the coming months.
First, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a plan to reduce public debt centered on raising the minimum corporate tax from 15% to 21%, and on a minimum income tax of 25% for billionaires. The announcement is especially significant because it was made in the traditional State of the Union address, a solemn moment that this year also marks the beginning of the election campaign for the November elections. It is no coincidence that Biden has decided to call on the super-rich and corporations, especially the largest, to contribute the most to public finances’ healing: they are in fact the two categories that have managed to offload most of the inflation of recent years on consumers, wages and the less well-off categories in general.
The plan is highly unlikely to become a reality in a Congress dominated by a radicalized Republican Party, united behind Donald Trump, and conservative Democrats. But its symbolic significance is important and makes it clear what interests the president intends to defend in the November elections. With this proposal, the Biden administration proves once again, at least as far as economic issues are concerned, to be the most progressive in recent decades, much more courageous in attempting to protect the middle classes than the iconic, but ultimately too timid, Barack Obama.
A minimum tax rate for the super-rich
The issue of tax justice, and this is the second piece of recent news, is also at the center of the agenda of Lula’s Brazilian government, which in 2024 holds the rotating presidency of the G20. The G20 is probably the most significant body today for the coordination of economic policies at the international level. It is therefore particularly significant that the idea of reintroducing more progressivity by taxing the super-rich, which is not new in itself, is being discussed there.
In front of the G20 finance ministers that were meeting in São Paulo, the Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman pleaded for a fairer global system, first of all insisting on how tax progressivity, being crucial for financing public goods such as health, education, infrastructure, is one of the pillars on which the growth and the social contract of well-functioning democracies are based. Second, documenting how the tax systems of most countries have, in recent decades, become fundamentally regressive, especially with regard to the few thousand super-rich that sit at the top of the income distribution. In France, for example, the poorest 10% of the population pays almost 50% of their income in taxes, while the super-rich pay less than a third (the figure is taken from the 2024 Global Tax Evasion Report).
The reasons for this aberration are well known: the unbridled rush of recent decades to fiscal dumping, the benefits offered by many countries to multinationals and higher income owners in an attempt to attract them, have created a multitude of tax niches and possibilities for the wealthier to structure their income and their fortune in such a way as to generate low or no taxable incomes.
Precisely to avoid fiscal competition between countries, which allows the wealthier (but also multinationals) to travel in search of tax havens, Zucman and others are pushing for a global solution, along the lines of the BEPS agreement reached at the OECD in 2021 on the taxation of multinationals. For this reason, the initiative of the Brazilian presidency and the decision of the G20 finance ministers to commission a report that goes into the details of the proposal are very good signs.
Beyond the details that will need to be worked on, crucial to avoid loopholes and avoidance, the proposal by Zucman the economists of the Tax Observatory he heads, on which the G20 will discuss in the coming months, is that of a minimum rate of taxation on the super-rich, designed taking as a model the aforementioned OECD agreement on the minimum rate for multinationals. Since income, for the reasons mentioned above, is very difficult to compute, the international community should agree that taxpayers pay at least a certain percentage of their wealth in income taxes (Zucman proposes 2%). The proposal has several advantages: (1) those who already pay high income taxes would not have any additional burden, while those with large wealth that manage to hide their income from the tax authorities (in a more or less legal way) would be called upon to pay. (2) in many countries there are already instruments for assessing wealth, which would therefore only need to be generalised and harmonised. (3) as with the minimum tax on multinationals, mechanisms can be devised to discourage the relocation of wealth to countries that decide not to cooperate. (4) even with just a low rate like the one proposed by Zucman, it would be possible to obtain tax revenues of hundreds of billions a year, which are needed above all by the poorest countries to finance welfare, ecological transition, and infrastructure for growth.
Last, but certainly not least, being able to get the richest to contribute to the common good would help at least in part to restore the sense of justice and trust in the social contract that has progressively eroded in recent decades. As Zucman concludes in his address to the G20 ministers, “Such an agreement would be in the interest of all economic actors, even the taxpayers involved. Because what is at stake is not only the dynamic of global inequality: it is the very social sustainability of globalization, from which the wealthy benefit so much.”
The conservative revolutions of the early 1980s ushered in an era in which the watchword was simply “get as rich as you can and think only of yourself” (exemplified by Gordon Gekko’s praise of greed in Oliver Stone’s masterful Wall Street). That era did not bring us the promised prosperity or stability. On the contrary, we now live in sick democracies, unstable economies characterized by intolerable levels of rent seeking and inequality. In the 1930s, one of Keynes’s goals in pleading for an active role of the government was to save capitalism, in crisis and threatened by the rise of the Soviet Union. The many who are in love with the supposed Great Moderation of the 1980s and 1990s stubbornly opposing all attempts to correct excessive inequality, should think twice. Instead, they should endorse wholeheartedly attempts such as that of the G20 Brazilian presidency to save capitalism above all from its internal enemies, far more dangerous than the external ones.
Reforesting the Earth: The Human Drivers of Forest Conservation, Restoration, and Expansion – review
In Reforesting the Earth, Thomas K Rudel draws on historical research and case studies to examine the drivers of deforestation and proposes reforestation as an urgent natural solution to the climate crisis. The book advocates for socio-political corporatist processes and local participation to enable successful forest conservation and expansion, offering useful insights for environmentalists, policymakers and activists, writes Mohd Amin Khan.
The global climate crisis poses a serious threat to the earth’s ecosystem – its biodiversity, forests, soil fertility, water quality, and atmospheric carbon concentration. The impact on nature in turn has adverse effects on the socio-economic, cultural wellbeing and health of people across the globe, with a markedly unequal distribution of these negative effects on nations and communities. In his latest book, Thomas K Rudel emphasises the need for reforestation as a natural solution to the problems of climate change.
Reforesting the Earth aims to investigate the drivers of forest destruction and the factors influencing reforestation and the expansion of forests. It seeks to comprehend the role of human activity, including socio-political corporatist processes – policies based on the inclusive decision-making and governance of an organisation relating to other stakeholders like politicians, activists, donors, farmers, foresters, indigenous groups, and landowners – in reforestation by applying an integrated, case studies-based global data analysis. The ambition is to contribute to global climate crisis alleviation through natural solutions. The book unfolds over nine chapters, four of which discuss the historical background, concepts, theories, and analysis and the other five of which cover 19 cases studies of forest gain or loss worldwide.
The author begins with historical perspectives on the current political system: the actions and events that have precipitated the climate crisis. He then considers what would be the best approach to mitigate the adverse impacts of the crisis. He grounds his argument by elucidating the ways of living of traditional societies that evinced a respectful rather than an extractive relationship with nature. After the age of scientific discovery and innovation in Europe and the industrial revolution (roughly from the late 16th century to the 18th century), the exploitation of nature became an essential aspect of modernity, paving the way to commercialism and a capitalistic society. This shift involved major transformation in terms of socio-economic and political orders and commercial activity, resulting in rapid urbanisation, agricultural expansion, industrialisation, mass migration, population growth and mass deforestation.
This shift [to modernity] involved major transformation in terms of socio-economic and political orders and commercial activity, resulting in rapid urbanisation, agricultural expansion, industrialisation, mass migration, population growth and mass deforestation.
The great economic movement in the 20th century had corresponding environmental consequences: mass deforestation, land degradation, water and air pollution, carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and depletion of natural resources. By the 1980s, this mass destruction of forest and other natural resources began to mobilise different stakeholders in support of forest conservation.
Rudell states that when collective action has occurred, it has most frequently taken a corporatist form, at both state and societal levels. Corporatist processes involve multiple parties from different strata of society (international investors to local politicians and farmers, indigenous people, environmental activists) coming together to discuss increasing forest cover in different locations. In these discussions, the involved parties agree to compacts where some transfer funds in exchange for others’ commitment to conserving and restoring forests. The parties collaborate on these activities, holding repeated meetings throughout the process. They work together to develop and implement successive plans for forest conservation, restoration, and expansion. Through these collaborative efforts, a corporatist polity emerges. When successful, this integration of diverse groups within the forest-agriculture sector leads to an increase in forest cover and carbon sequestration. Initiatives like the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration are the result of collective corporatist actions in which have achieved substantial increments in forest cover and carbon sequestration over time: “REDD+ agreements promote natural climate solutions by exerting direct control over land uses in defined territories. Eco-certification schemes promote natural climate solutions by indirect means” (31).
As local participation, active monitoring, and good governance have a positive association with forest resurgence, weakening these factors can lead to forest loss.
Rudell extends his discussion on the role of societal corporatist processes by analysing 19 diverse case studies worldwide. This involves considering the major five themes within forest conservation and reforestation: avoided deforestation (Ecuadorian Andes Amazon), secondary forest expansions (New England and New Deal South in the USA, Northwest Portugal, and Northern Costa Rica), forest plantation (Congo, China, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, and the USA), agroforestry-based farming (rubber, cocoa, coffee, and domestic forests), and silvopastoral practices (Upper-Lower Amazon and Nigerian Sahel). Among these 19 case studies, 12 witnessed forest gain.
The spatial distribution of the case studies reflects concerns about rapid deforestation in the Global South (due to the shifting of production firms in the Global South by Northern nations, as explained in Laurie Parsons’s Carbon Colonialism). Across the case studies, all major changes in forest cover occurred during the 20th and 21st centuries, which suggests that this change is the output of recent economic expansion.
Seven of the case studies Rudel examines recorded explicit forest loss. These losses occurred in forest plantations in Congo, Indonesia, Southeast USA, silvopastoral practices in the Lower Amazon region, and the agroforestry-based farming of rubber and cocoa in all seven. These seven case studies recorded forest loss, which can be explained by a lack of local participation in conservation programs, monitoring, and reporting, combined with weak governance resulting in corruption. As local participation, active monitoring, and good governance have a positive association with forest resurgence, weakening these factors can lead to forest loss: “Forest cover has increased in places with societal and state corporatism. It has not increased in places where states and governance have been weak or where crucial actors such as state officials or local landholders have not become participants in sectoral agreements to preserve or restore forests” (185).
Rudel advocates for the improved surveillance of forests through remote sensing, providing land rights to indigenous and local communities, eco-certification, encouraging a polycentric approach in governance, and institutionalising landscape changes and social movements of conservation to ensure reforestation projects succeed.
In conclusion, Rudel suggests that the climate crisis can be mitigated through reforestation and forest expansion with the effective engagement of socio-political corporatist arrangements. This is only possible through strong participation in forest conservation programmes and initiatives led by local and indigenous communities, environmental activities, local political parties, and both national and international non-governmental organisations. Furthermore, Rudel encourages normative changes such as reducing the demand and consumption of forest products and consequently forest losses. Similarly, declining beef consumption, seen notably in the US from 84 to 58 pounds per capita (1970-2020), holds promise for reforesting old cattle pastures. If this trend spreads globally, driven by increasing vegetarian identification in countries like India, China and the US, cattle ranchers may convert some pastures to forests. This reflects the successful reforestation observed in Costa Rica during the 1990s).
He advocates for the improved surveillance of forests through remote sensing, providing land rights to indigenous and local communities, eco-certification, encouraging a polycentric approach in governance, and institutionalising landscape changes and social movements of conservation to ensure reforestation projects succeed. The book is a valuable resource for a broad spectrum of readers, including environmentalists, climate activists, conservationists, sociologists, geographers, economists, and policymakers, as well as anyone interested in understanding and contributing to natural climate solutions to address the ongoing global climate crisis.
Acknowledgement: I am thankful to Monika and Anna D’Alton for reviewing the final draft of the book review and providing valuable suggestions and feedback which notably increases the readability of the book review.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: SOMRERK WITTHAYANANT on Shutterstock.
China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics – review
In China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics, Chris Alden and Álvaro Méndez examine Latin America and the Caribbean region’s interactions with China, revealing how a complex, evolving set of bilateral economic and political relations with Beijing – from Buenos Aires to Mexico City – have shaped recent development. Mark S. Langevin contends that the book is a noteworthy contribution to an understanding of China’s footprint in the region but does not offer a robust framework for comparative analysis.
China and Latin America: Development, Agency and Geopolitics. Chris Alden and Álvaro Méndez. Bloomsbury. 2022.
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China and Latin America offers a thoroughly researched account of China’s economic and political impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Alden and Méndez pivot on China’s centuries-long presence in LAC to weave an analysis of trade, investment and migration patterns, detailing a thick description of economic and political relations with the region’s governments and stakeholders. Their historical examination and assessments of national government responses to China are appropriately framed by the unfolding geopolitical rivalry between Beijing and Washington. The book details China’s underlying logic and overwhelming importance to LAC, providing a valuable contribution to the growing literature assessing Beijing’s role in the region’s economic development and international relations.
China is not new to LAC; its longstanding ties with the region provide an economic and social foundation for the massive trade and investment flows in recent decades.
In the introduction, Alden and Méndez remind readers that China is not new to LAC; its longstanding ties with the region provide an economic and social foundation for the massive trade and investment flows in recent decades. In chapter one, the authors tell an intriguing story of China’s dependence on “New World silver,” European and LAC elite thirst for Chinese-produced silks and ceramics during the fall of the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century, and the enduring impacts of the flow of indentured Chinese workers to the region in the eighteenth century. Accordingly, Chinese working-class immigrants settled in “cities like Lima, Tijuana, Panama City and Havana…” providing a human bridge to China while suffering through waves of xenophobia and anti-Chinese repression. China and Latin America documents the economic and social linkages tempered through centuries-long trade, investment and migration – a neglected foundation for understanding LAC’s economic development in recent decades.
The book raises several leading questions. In the introduction, Alden and Méndez explore the “interests, strategies and practices of China,” questioning whether Beijing’s approach to LAC is similar to its role in Africa (14). They ask what motivates Beijing’s interests in the region and how LAC governments, firms and social actors have responded to China’s “deepening economic and political involvement in the region” (15).
Although the book is thick on economic and historical detail, its thematic analytical framework does not guide comparative explanation within LAC and across developing regions, including Africa.
Although the book is thick on economic and historical detail, its thematic analytical framework does not guide comparative explanation within LAC and across developing regions, including Africa. Alden and Méndez offer three “broad themes” for narrating their analysis: development, agency and geopolitics. These dimensions can guide examination of Beijing’s underlying logic and regional economic and political relations but are insufficient to explain the variable regional results that could stem from Chinese policies, trade and investment or even geopolitical endeavours. Consequently, Alden and Méndez emphasise “diplomacy and statecraft” and “sub-state and societal actors” as conceptual references but without the formal specification for selecting cases, testing explanations and comparing outcomes at the national and regional levels.
For example, the book explores several groups of Latin American nations and case studies of Brazil and Mexico. Chapter three’s treatment of Chile, Peru and Argentina, chapter four’s analysis of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and chapter seven’s assessment of Central America and the Caribbean reflect similar patterns of development and diplomacy. However, these chapters do not present a systematic comparative analysis between these cases. Moreover, the authors’ slim selection method excludes Paraguay and Uruguay without assessing these nations’ participation in the Common Market of South America (Mercosur) along with Argentina and Brazil. Indeed, Uruguay’s recent proposal to ditch Mercosur and negotiate a bilateral trade treaty with Beijing makes it an interesting case for comparison with Mexico, given its longstanding ties to Canada and the US through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor pact (USMCA).
In chapter four, Alden and Méndez explain how the “sustained rise in commodity prices” – much of it fuelled by Chinese demand – “enabled these governments to seek rents from export tax revenues and direct them toward development and social programmes,” an approach the authors associate with “neo-extractivism.” Accordingly, the so-called Bolivarian republics of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia sought to replace their dependency on the U.S. with China. Beijing embraced the opportunity, but the growing Chinese footprint “obscured the commercial intent and practices pursued by Chinese firms” (103). In response, these nations’ governments grappled with increasing Chinese debt, among other externalities brought by Chinese firms, including the “willful neglect of the concerns of local communities, environmentalists and labour activists.” Indeed, as the authors point out, even Beijing grew weary of the region’s “high expectations” and the growing “costs of entanglements” (104).
The book’s treatment of Venezuela is pivotal because it details the most extreme case of commodity export dependence and debt-trap diplomacy in the region.
The book’s treatment of Venezuela is pivotal because it details the most extreme case of commodity export dependence and debt-trap diplomacy in the region. This sets an analytical benchmark that sharply contrasts with Brazil’s diversified commodity exports to China and the parallel influx of Chinese goods, foreign direct investment and migrants, along with the incipient pattern of technology transfer through the localisation of Chinese manufacturing firms in Brazil.
On the energy front, Venezuela shifted to government control over petroleum production after Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in the late 1990s, while Brazil partially liberalised the sector during the same period. The authors assess China’s rise and growing demand for petroleum products but do not explain the divergent policy approaches taken by Caracas and Brasilia. Did Venezuela’s deepening authoritarianism and Brazil’s vibrant democracy shape Beijing’s approach to these countries and help determine the different outcomes in the petroleum sector, or are the differences limited to these countries’ respective opportunities for crude oil production for export? Moreover, do these contrasting policy-response patterns explain diplomatic outcomes, including Caracas’ growing distance from Washington? Alden and Méndez contribute to our understanding but fall short of a comparable explanation of Venezuela and Brazil’s two very different paths.
Chapter eight offers a vital perspective of China’s presence in LAC within the emerging geopolitical landscape that pits Washington against Beijing.
In conclusion, chapter eight offers a vital perspective of China’s presence in LAC within the emerging geopolitical landscape that pits Washington against Beijing. The authors explain China’s deepening engagements, becoming an observer to the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2004 and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 2008, and President Xi Jinping’s trip to Brasilia in 2014 to attend the first Summit of Leaders of China and LAC. Xi’s confident embrace of the region did not initially spark concern in Washington, according to Alden and Méndez. However, as the authors recount, by 2018, the US National Defense Strategy Summary confirmed Washington’s acknowledgment of the strategic competition with Beijing throughout LAC.
Alden and Méndez raise a central question that should frame research and policymaking in the coming years: at what point do the citizens and leaders of LAC search for alternatives to ‘China’s dominant position in their country’s economic and political life?’
China and Latin America concludes, “No longer passive, Chinese diplomacy now looms large in the capitals and boardrooms across the region, leaving the once-unassailable US dominance scrambling to regain its standing” (175). Hence, Alden and Méndez raise a central question that should frame research and policymaking in the coming years: at what point do the citizens and leaders of LAC search for alternatives to “China’s dominant position in their country’s economic and political life?”
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
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AI Is Helping Indigenous Teens in Brazil Keep Their Mother Tongue Alive
Huddled in small groups around laptops, 20 Brazilian teenagers — a group including TikTok influencers and gamers — are using an app to build a skill that’s vital to the future of their entire community.
The teenagers belong to the Guarani Indigenous people, based in a community two hours from São Paulo, and they are fluent in speaking both Portuguese and their mother tongue, Guarani Mbya. But when it comes to writing, they often default to Portuguese as that’s what they were first taught to write in, putting the Guarani Mbya language in its written form at risk of disappearing.
But since March of this year, they’ve been using an app to improve their ability to write in Guarani Mbya. The “Linguistic Assistant” app works like the autocorrect and text suggestion feature on cell phones to help them build on the sentences they start writing themselves.
Guarani students are learning how to write in their native language from the app. Courtesy of IBM
The app is part of a project funded by IBM to create AI tools to help preserve and expand the use of Indigenous languages in Brazil. The students — who make up the sole high school class across seven villages of around 3,000 people, on a reservation of 23,000 square miles — were nominated by their wider community to be the focus of IBM’s AI for Indigenous languages social impact work in their region.
The results so far are promising, according to Dr. Claudio Pinhanez, an AI specialist at IBM and visiting professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), who is leading the project. “By the end of the semester, we saw they were starting to write longer sentences on their own in their language. The progress they were making is amazing,” he says.
Digital empowerment for vulnerable languages
Guarani Mbya is one of 202 Indigenous languages spoken in Brazil, with 190 of them considered at risk of dying out — and 22 already have. With around 17,000 speakers, Guarani Mbya is classified by UNESCO as a vulnerable language, meaning that while it’s widely spoken, its use is restricted to certain domains, for example, like the home, or with certain family members.
Of the 7,000 or so languages that exist in the world, about a fifth are thought to be endangered, with the United Nations estimating that half of these will be extinct or close to it by 2100 — the majority being Indigenous languages. Hence it’s declared 2022 to 2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, to help increase resources, support and awareness for their protection, recognizing in particular the role technology has to play in what it calls “digital empowerment.”
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The movement to prevent Indigenous languages from disappearing has prompted a number of tech-centric language preservation and expansion projects like the one Dr. Pinhanez is leading at IBM and USP. For example, in Australia, where First Nations people speak more than 250 Indigenous languages, the University of Melbourne has launched its 50 Words project, an interactive language map that aims to offer at least 50 words of each Australian Indigenous language, as part of a nationwide Indigenous language preservation movement.
In neighboring New Zealand, nonprofit media organization Te Hiku has developed an app to collect oral recordings of Indigenous languages across the region, to help speakers boost their everyday use of their native language. And recognizing, as the Guarani people have, that the written form of a language can be challenging and equally important to preserve, a type foundry worked closely with Indigenous communities in Canada to develop new typefaces that make it easier for them to express themselves in writing.
Buoyed by how the Guarani teens have embraced technology to improve their written native language skills, Dr. Pinhanez and his team now plan to evolve the chatbot from a desktop app to one that can be downloaded to a cell phone, which will look and feel like WhatsApp.
After one semester, students were starting to write longer sentences on their own in their language. Courtesy of IBM
“[The teens] see writing as a way to integrate their many communities, and to be able to tell their own stories in a way that is more stable than just speech. The community told us their youth were very interested in computers and engaged in social media, but needed to improve their native language writing, and that’s where they want us to help,” says Dr. Pinhanez.
He and his team are also keen to offer the tool as a free resource to other Indigenous communities, emphasizing that this is a strictly nonprofit initiative.
Embracing technology while protecting culture
With projects like these, there are two key considerations that are inherently linked: the importance of co-developing and co-designing AI tools and frameworks with Indigenous communities, and the need to train Indigenous people in coding and development. Doing so gives them real stewardship of such projects, as Dr. Pinhanez outlined in a recent paper he co-authored.
But embracing technology and the desire to protect culture and language are often at odds in Indigenous communities, as Dr. Drea Burbank has observed. Dr. Burbank grew up on Nez Perce lands in Idaho, is trained in Indigenous health and had a nine-year career as a firefighter working closely with Indigenous communities in the US and Canada.
She is now the founder and CEO of Savimbo, an organization which helps Indigenous small farmers and Indigenous communities in the Amazon sell carbon and biodiversity credits. Savimbo also supports them with land rights, literacy and bank accounts. Dr. Burbank has been based near the town of Villagarzon in Colombia since May 2022.
“A minority group that’s fighting to preserve a counterculture will create walls around the culture to try not to dilute it, because the majority culture is automatically going to wipe that culture out,” says Dr. Burbank.
While many of the Indigenous communities Dr. Burbank works with feel technology could contribute to that dilution, she believes it can benefit Indigenous communities. For example, she is looking specifically for partners to help create banking interfaces in Indigenous languages, powered by voice recognition passwords. She’s concerned, though, that a lack of tech savviness would hamper these communities’ ability to properly consent to and govern the use of AI language tools.
The teens “see writing as a way to integrate their many communities, and to be able to tell their own stories in a way that is more stable than just speech,” according to Dr. Pinhanez. Courtesy of IBM
“We’re talking about communities where even turning on an iPhone or writing a password is a barrier. It’s very difficult for them to give informed consent for novel technologies,” says Dr. Burbank.
That’s why José Alberto Garreta Jansasoy, Governor of the Cofán Indigenous Reservation in Colombia and a Savimbo advisor, would like technology to come with wider strategies to support the communities more holistically. He believes videos could be a helpful resource for teaching the Cofán language to young people, as it’s currently not widely spoken. He would also like to see resources allocated to Cofán language-specific schools.
“Spanish is more commonly practiced for better communication with outsiders, which has led to the unfortunate consequence of gradually abandoning our native language. Fortunately, we have realized this and are working to reclaim our language,” says Jansasoy.
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Fellow Savimbo advisor Ramón Uboñe Gaba Caiga, a community leader in the Waorani tribe in Ecuador, feels optimistic that AI tools for preserving Indigenous languages can have the double benefit of expanding environmental and sustainability knowledge, as so much of that is tied into the language.
“It is very important today that young people can have a digital file where they can know the reality of us, and how we protect biodiversity, territory education and health, to have this information as a database for future generations,” says Gaba Caiga, who speaks Wao Terero, which is only spoken by about 5,000 people.
Reciprocal benefits to AI
Indigenous languages can also help to develop AI further, as Dr. Pinhanez points out. Large language models like ChatGPT have not necessarily been trained ethically, having been fed novels and texts without permission from the authors. Since Indigenous communities would need to actively provide texts and consent to their use, working with them could help to change the status quo when it comes to AI practices. And as Indigenous societies’ belief and reasoning systems differ dramatically from Western cultures, using more of them as stimulus for AI models would help remove some of the limits they currently face when it comes to how reasonable and wide-ranging their responses are.
As Dr. Pinhanez writes: “Documentation and vitalization of Indigenous languages has this unique quality of pushing AI to be better in terms of technology and ethics at the same time.”
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Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff: It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning
The judicial coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for 50 years.
Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through one of those moments: it is dreamland for social scientists; a nightmare for everyone else.
Dilma Rousseff was elected President in 2010, with a 56-44 per cent majority against the right-wing neoliberal PSDB (Brazilian Social Democratic Party) opposition candidate. She was re-elected four years later with a diminished yet convincing majority of 52-48 per cent, or a difference of 3.5 million votes.
Dilma’s second victory sparked a heated panic among the neoliberal and US-aligned opposition. The fourth consecutive election of a President affiliated to the centre-left PT (Workers’ Party) was bad news for the opposition, among other reasons because it suggested that PT founder Luís Inácio Lula da Silva could return in 2018. Lula had been President between 2003 and 2010 and, when he left office, his approval ratings hit 90 per cent, making him the most popular leader in Brazilian history. This threat of continuity suggested that the opposition could be out of federal office for a generation. They immediately rejected the outcome of the vote. No credible complaints could be made, but no matter; it was resolved that Dilma Rousseff would be overthrown by any means necessary. To understand what happened next, we must return to 2011.
Dilma inherited from Lula a booming economy. Alongside China and other middle-income countries, Brazil bounced back vigorously after the global crisis. GDP expanded by 7.5 per cent in 2010, the fastest rate in decades, and Lula’s hybrid neoliberal-neodevelopmental economic policies seemed to have hit the perfect balance: sufficiently orthodox to enjoy the confidence of large sections of the internal bourgeoisie and the formal and informal working class, and heterodox enough to deliver the greatest redistribution of income and privilege in Brazil’s recorded history. For example, the real minimum wage rose by 70 per cent and 21 million (mostly low-paid) jobs were created in the 2000s. Social provision increased significantly, including the world-famous Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer programme, and the Government supported a dramatic expansion of higher education, including quotas for blacks and state school pupils. For the first time, the poor could access education as well as income and bank loans. They proceeded to study, earn and borrow, and to occupy spaces, literally, previously the preserve of the upper-middle class: airports, shopping malls, banks, private health facilities and roads, with the latter clogged up by cheap cars purchased on 72 easy payments. The Government enjoyed a comfortable majority in a highly fragmented Congress, and Lula’s legendary political skills managed to keep most of the political elite on side.
Then everything started to go wrong. Dilma Rousseff was chosen by Lula as his successor. She was a steady pair of hands and a competent manager and enforcer. She was also the most left-wing President of Brazil since João Goulart, who was overthrown by a military coup in 1964. However, she had no political track record and, it will soon become evident, lacked essential qualities for the job.
Once elected, Dilma shifted economic policies further away from neoliberalism. The Government intervened in several sectors seeking to promote investment and output, and put intense pressure on the financial system to reduce interest rates, which lowered credit costs and the Government’s debt service, releasing funds for consumption and investment. A virtuous circle of growth and distribution seemed possible. Unfortunately, the Government miscalculated the lasting impact of the global crisis. The US and European economies stagnated, China’s growth faltered, and the so-called commodity super-cycle vanished. Brazil’s current account was ruined. Even worse, the US, UK, Japan and the Eurozone introduced quantitative easing policies that led to massive capital outflows towards middle-income countries. Brazil faced a tsunami of foreign exchange, that overvalued the currency and bred deindustrialisation. Economic growth rates fell precipitously.
The Government doubled its interventionism through public investment, subsidised loans and tax rebates, which ravaged the public accounts. Their frantic and seemingly random interventionism scared away the internal bourgeoisie: local magnates were content to run Government through the Workers’ Party, but would not be managed by a former political prisoner who overtly despised them. And her antipathy was not only reserved for the capitalists: the President had little inclination to speak to social movements, left organisations, lobbies, allied parties, elected politicians, or her own ministers. The economy stalled and Dilma’s political alliances shrank, in a fast-moving dance of destruction. The neoliberal opposition scented blood.
For years, the opposition to the PT had been rudderless. The PSDB had nothing appealing to offer while, as is traditional in Brazil, most other parties were gangs of bandits extorting the Government for selfish gain. The situation was so desperate that the mainstream media overtly took the mantle of opposition, driving the anti-PT agenda and literally instructing politicians what to do next. In the meantime, the radical left remained small and relatively powerless. It was despised by the hegemonic ambitions of the PT.
The confluence of dissatisfactions became an irresistible force in 2013. The mainstream media is rabidly neoliberal and utterly ruthless: it is as if Fox News and its clones dominated the entire US media, including all TV chains and the main newspapers. The upper-middle class was their obliging target, as they had economic, social and political reasons to be unhappy. Upper-middle class jobs were declining, with 4.3 million posts paying between 5 and 10 minimum wages vanishing in the 2000s. In the meantime, the bourgeoisie was doing well, and the poor advanced fast: even domestic servants got labour rights. The upper-middle class felt squeezed economically, and excluded from their privileged spaces. It was also dislocated from the state. Since Lula’s election, the state bureaucracy had been populated by thousands of cadres appointed by the PT and the left, to the detriment of ‘better-educated’, whiter and, presumably, more deserving upper-middle class competitors. Mass demonstrations erupted for the first time in June 2013, triggered by left-wing opposition against a bus fare increase in São Paulo. Those demonstrations were fanned by the media and captured by the upper middle-class and the right, and they shook the Government – but, clearly, not enough to motivate them to save themselves. The demonstrations returned two years later. And then in 2016.
Now, reader, follow this. After the decimation of the state apparatus by the pre-Lula neoliberal administrations, the PT sought to rebuild selected areas of the bureaucracy. Among them, for reasons that Lula may soon have plenty of time to review and to regret, the Federal Police and the Federal Prosecution Office (FPO). In addition, for overtly ‘democratic’ reasons, but more likely related to corporatism and capacity to make media-friendly noises, the Federal Police and the FPO were granted inordinate autonomy; the former through mismanagement, while the latter has become the fourth power in the Republic, separate from – and checking – the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The abundance of qualified jobseekers led to the colonisation of these well-paying jobs by upper-middle class cadres. They were now in a constitutionally secure position, and could chew the hand that had fed them, while loudly demanding, through the media, additional resources to maul the rest of the PT’s body.
Corruption was the ideal pretext. Since it lost the first democratic presidential elections, in 1989, the PT moved steadily towards the political centre. In order to lure the upper-middle class and the internal bourgeoisie, the PT neutralised or expelled the party’s left wing, disarmed the trade unions and social movements, signed up to the neoliberal economic policies pursued by the previous administration, and imposed a dour conformity that killed off any alternative leadership. Only Lula’s sun can shine in the party; everything else was incinerated. This strategy was eventually successful and, in 2002, ‘Little Lula Peace and Love’ was elected President. (I kid you not, reader: this was one of his campaign slogans.)
For years the PT had thrived in opposition as the only honest political party in Brazil. This strategy worked, but it contained a lethal contradiction: in order to win expensive elections, manage the Executive and build a workable majority in Congress, the PT would have to get its hands dirty. There is no other way to ‘do’ politics in Brazilian ‘democracy’.
We only need one more element, and our mixture will be ready to combust. Petrobras is Brazil’s largest corporation and one of the world’s largest oil companies. The firm has considerable technical and economic capacity, and it was responsible for the discovery, in 2006, of gigantic ‘pre-salt’ deep sea oilfields hundreds of miles from the Brazilian coast. Dilma Rousseff, as Lula’s Minister of Mines and Energy, was responsible for handling exploration contracts in these areas including large privileges for Petrobras. The enabling legislation was vigorously opposed by PSDB, the media, the oil majors and the US Government.
In 2014, Sergio Moro, a previously unknown judge in Curitiba, a Southern state capital, started investigating a currency dealer involved in tax evasion. This case eventually spiralled into a deadly threat against Dilma Rousseff’s Government. Judge Moro is good-looking, well-educated, white and well-paid. He is also very close to the PSDB. His Lavajato (Carwash) operation unveiled an extraordinary tale of large-scale bribery, plunder of public assets and funding for all major political parties, centred on the relationship between Petrobras and some of its main suppliers – precisely the stalwarts of the PT in the oil, shipbuiding and construction industries. It was the perfect combination, at the right time. Judge Moro’s cause was picked up by the media, and he obligingly steered it to inflict maximum damage on the PT, while shielding the other parties. Politicians connected to the PT and some of Brazil’s wealthiest businessmen were summarily jailed, and would remain locked up until they agreed a plea bargain implicating others. A new phase of Lavajato would ensnare them, and so on. The operation is now in its 26th phase; many have already collaborated, and those who refused to do so have received long prison sentences, to coerce them back into line while their appeals are pending. The media turned Judge Moro into a hero; he can do no wrong, and attempts to contest his sprawling powers are met with derision or worse. He is now the most powerful person in the Republic, above Dilma, Lula, the speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate (both sinking in corruption and other scandals), and even the Supreme Court Justices, who have either been silenced or are quietly supportive of Moro’s crusade.
Petrobras has been paralysed by the scandal, bringing down the entire oil chain. Private investment has collapsed because of political uncertainty and the politically-driven investment strike against Dilma’s Government. Congress has turned against the Government, and the Judiciary is overwhelmingly hostile. After years of sniping, the media has been delighted to see Lula fall under the Lavajato juggernaut, even if the allegations are often far-fetched: does he actually own a beach-side apartment that his family does not use, is that small farm really his, who paid for the lake and the mobile phone masts nearby, and how about those pedalos? No matter: in a display of bravado and power, Moro even detained Lula for questioning on 4 March. He was taken to São Paulo airport and would have been flown to Curitiba, but the Judge’s plan was halted by fear of the political fallout. Lula was questioned at the airport, then released. He was livid.
In order to shore up her crumbling administration and protect Lula from prosecution, Dilma Rousseff appointed Lula her Chief of Staff (the President’s Chief of Staff has ministerial status and can be prosecuted only by the Supreme Court). The right-wing conspiracy went into overdrive. Moro (illegally) released the (illegal) recording of a conversation between President Dilma and Lula, pertaining to his investiture. Once suitably misinterpreted, their dialogue was presented as ‘proof’ of a conspiracy to protect Lula from Moro’s determination to jail him. Large right-wing upper-middle class masses poured into the streets, furiously, on 13 March. Five days later, the left responded with not quite as large demonstrations of its own against the unfolding coup. In the meantime, Lula’s appointment was suspended by a judicial measure, then restored, then suspended again. The case is now in the Supreme Court. At the moment, he is not a Minister, and his head is posed above the block. Moro can arrest him at short notice.
Why is this a coup? Because, despite aggressive scrutiny no Presidential crime warranting impeachment proceedings has emerged. Nevertheless, the political right has thrown the kitchen sink at Dilma Rousseff. They rejected the outcome of the 2014 elections and appealed against her alleged campaign finance violations, which would remove from power both Dilma and Vice-President Michel Temer, now the effective leader of the impeachment drive (and strangely enough, this case has been parked). The right simultaneously started impeachment procedures in Congress. The media has attacked the Government viciously, neoliberal economists ‘impartially’ beg for a new administration ‘to restore market confidence’, and the right will resort to street violence as necessary. Finally, the judicial charade against the PT has broken all the rules of legality, yet it is cheered on by the media, the right and even by the Supreme Court Justices.
Yet… the coup de grâce is taking a long time coming. In the olden days, the military would have already moved in. Today, the Brazilian military are defined more by their nationalism (a danger to the neoliberal onslaught) than by their right-wing faith and, anyway, the Soviet Union is no more. Under neoliberalism, coups d’état must follow legal niceties, as was shown in Honduras, in 2009, and in Paraguay, in 2012.
Brazil is likely to join their company, but not just now: large sections of capital want to restore the hegemony of neoliberalism; those who once supported the PT’s national development strategy have fallen into line; the media is howling so loudly it has become impossible to think clearly, and most of the upper-middle class has descended into a fascist odium for the PT, the left, the poor, and blacks. Their disorderly hatred has become so intense that even PSDB politicians are booed in anti-Government demonstrations. And, despite the relentless attack, the left remains reasonably strong, as was demonstrated on 18th March. The right and the elite are powerful and ruthless – but they are also afraid of the consequences of their own daring.
There is no simple resolution to the political, economic and social crises in Brazil. Dilma Rousseff has lost political support and the confidence of capital, and she is likely to be removed from office in the coming days. However, attempts to imprison Lula could have unpredictable implications and, even if Dilma and Lula are struck off the political map, a renewed neoliberal hegemony cannot automatically restore political stability or economic growth, nor secure the social prominence that the upper-middle class craves. Despite strong media support for the impending coup, the PT, other left parties and many radical social movements remain strong. Further escalation is inevitable. Watch this space.
Democracy in the Crucible: Impeachment or Coup d’État in Brazil?
As first posted on E-International Relations, Brazil is the world’s sixth largest economy, a prominent member of the G-20 and the BRICS group of large emerging countries, and the host of the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. The country has also attracted attention since the Presidential election of PT (Workers’ Party) candidates Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, in 2002 and 2006, and Dilma Rousseff, in 2010 and 2014. Their administrations have played a leading role in the Latin American ‘Pink Tide’; Brazil has also achieved considerable gains in employment and distribution, and was one of the few nations where social spending rose in the current ‘Age of Neoliberalism’.
Yet, Brazil finds itself enmeshed in the worst economic contraction in a generation, coupled with a political deadlock fuelled by a parade of corruption scandals. A particularly grotesque one has engulfed the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, who is struggling for his political life while, simultaneously, leading impeachment procedures against President Rousseff. Even if her administration survives, Rousseff is unlikely to regain the ability to pass legislation through a bitterly hostile Congress, further impairing the country’s economic prospects.
This is calamitous for Brazil, and potentially lethal for the PT. At the end of his second administration, Lula enjoyed approval rates bordering on 90 per cent, and Dilma Rousseff’s approvals hovered around 70 per cent until 2013. The collapse has been relentless: her popularity is now stuck in single digits. There is profound cross-class discontent, a mass-based political right has emerged for the first time since the 1960s, and the mainstream media has been promoting a vicious campaign against the PT and anything approaching even social democracy. If they succeed, there may be a long-term shift to the right in the largest country in Latin America.
Lula’s search for political hegemony
The forces driving today’s economic and political crises can be traced back to the incompatibility between two transitions taking place in last 30 years: the political transition from military rule to democracy, that was sealed by the progressive Constitution of 1988, and the economic transition from import-substitution industrialisation to neoliberalism, that was consolidated by the macroeconomic policy ‘tripod’ imposed in 1999, including inflation targeting and Central Bank independence, liberalisation of capital flows, and permanently contractionary fiscal and monetary policies.
The Constitution is socially inclusive; it has democratised and decentralised power and mandated the creation of a Swedish-style welfare state, including extensive social rights and income guarantees. In contrast, neoliberalism promotes the interests of internationalised capital in general and finance in particular, concentrates economic and political power and imposes an exclusionary democracy cloaked as ‘macroeconomic stability’. The friction between incompatible principles of social organisation – democracy or neoliberalism – helps to explain both the election of Lula, and the destruction of his successor.
Correspondingly, for 25 years Brazilian political life has been structured by the conflict between the social-democratic PT and the hardline neoliberal Social Democratic Party, PSDB. In Poulantzian fashion, these parties are closely aligned with two fractions of capital. Domestic capital is based primarily on construction, shipbuilding, the capital goods industry, agribusiness and national banks. They have supported the PT in exchange for subsidised state finance and institutional protection supporting their complex relationship of competition and co-operation with global capital. Internationalised capital includes foreign firms and their associates across finance, insurance, globally-integrated manufacturing and the mainstream media which, although overwhelmingly owned by domestic capital, is committed to neoliberalism and rejects the notion of a ‘national’ development strategy. This group is represented by the PSDB.
The PT administrations promoted the interests of domestic capital and the workers with considerable success during the period of prosperity afforded by the commodity boom pulled by the USA and, subsequently, by China. For example, these administrations supported the expansion of the oil chain through the state-owned Petrobras, the country’s largest firm; the shipbuilding industry recovered from the disaster imposed in the 1990s by the PSDB administration of F.H. Cardoso that reduced it to 5,000 workers. Under Lula, profits ballooned and employment in the shipyards rose to 105,000. The PT administrations reduced real interest rates from a peak of 22 per cent, under Cardoso, to 3 per cent, under Dilma, and dramatically expanded subsidised finance through the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), that became the largest development bank in the world.
These governments also benefitted the organised workers and the poor, both indirectly through the expansion of the economy, and directly through the government’s wage, employment and transfer policies. The minimum wage rose by 72 per cent in real terms between 2005 and 2012, and social provision increased through pensions, benefits and the flagship Bolsa Família cash transfer programme. Economic prosperity and a supportive administration also facilitated social struggles. There were around 300 strikes in 2003, and less than 20 per cent of collective actions led to real wage gains; in 2013 there were 2,000 strikes, and 95 per cent of agreements increased real wages.
Yet social and economic achievements did not create a stable political hegemony. For example, the PT and its close allies never controlled more than one-third of seats in Congress. Instead, they always depended on broad alliances with unreliable parties and opportunistic groups in order to pass legislation. In the meantime, the mainstream media remained ravenously hostile to Lula and Dilma, often orchestrating the parliamentary opposition. The Judiciary is also firmly aligned with the political right. Finally, corruption remains an essential link between politics and business life. Thievery and underhand transfers supplement the machinery of the state, democratic processes and the institutional modalities of representation of the elite. It is only natural that, in the 1990s, the PT decided that in order to win elections instead of being honourably defeated, it needed to begin distributing favours to its business supporters, and reward unprincipled politicians in exchange for their support. There is no other way to govern the country. These crooked circumstances were incompatible with political coherence, and the PT was always tripping on the verge of calamity.
The favourable winds of the global commodity boom supported Lula’s programme of income distribution, but his economic ambitions were constrained by the neoliberal policy tripod. Fiscal and monetary austerity, large capital movements and incoherent industrial policies overvalued the currency and promoted economic precarisation. Brazil created millions of jobs in the 2000s, but they were mostly precarious and poorly paid posts in urban services. Infrastructure funding was always lagging, creating a yawning gap between rising consumption levels within the household and the provision of public goods and services, especially transport, water, sanitation, security, schooling and health. Mass frustration crept in. In the meantime, the upper middle classes felt increasingly alienated from the government, because of their exclusion from power and the feeling that ‘their’ taxes were funding feckless hordes and arrogant arrivistes, who insisted on their right of admission to shopping centres, airports and private clinics.
Brazil recovered rapidly from the global crisis through bold monetary and fiscal policies. However, the scope for success was limited because growth was driven by commodity exports, for which demand was bound to decline, backed up by fickle capital inflows. Since the economy is permanently hampered by the neoliberal policy tripod, if the external engine splutters domestic growth will falter, regardless of fiscal tweaks or bombastic attacks on corruption. If, in addition, the government is isolated politically, demoralised, and beset by an investment strike, the economy must fall off a cliff. Let us see how it happened.
The cracks are showing: Dilma’s fall, and the emboldening of the Right
Dilma Rousseff was never a politician, nor was she a member of the PT until recently. She was a manager and a fixer, and was offered the Ministry of Energy in 2003. There, she oversaw the massive expansion of the country’s oil industry. She subsequently became President Lula’s Chief of Staff. Dilma succeeded in both posts and Lula, at the height of his powers, anointed her PT candidate to his succession.
Once elected, Dilma tilted economic policy further away from neoliberalism. She introduced more expansionary fiscal policies, lowered interest rates, imposed marginal capital controls, funded additional state investment, expanded transfers and intervened in multiple sectors. The outcome was ruinous. The government expected the global crisis to peter out but, instead, it deepened. Quantitative easing in the advanced economies wreaked havoc with the Brazilian real; the media intensified its attacks, and domestic capital refused to invest since it could neither control the government nor claim easy profits. The current account deficit ballooned, and the economy tanked. The government lost the ability to conciliate conflicting interests. The urban poor rebelled in 2013, but their protests were hijacked by the right-wing media and a bitterly hostile upper middle class.
Dilma campaigned for re-election with a left-wing message, warning against the neoliberal adjustment planned by her PSDB rival. However, once victorious, Dilma appointed as Finance Minister a banker connected to the PSDB, and gave him free rein to restore the government’s ‘credibility’ through a sharp fiscal and monetary contraction. The left cried foul, and Rousseff’s working class supporters felt betrayed. The retraction of demand during a protracted global crisis triggered the collapse of investment. Output nose-dived and unemployment mounted. The economy contracted 3.5 per cent in 2015, and 2016 can be just as bad. The gains from the 2000s are being wiped out as we speak. International capital is waiting for Dilma’s fall; domestic capital is cowering, and the formal sector workers are dumbfounded by their losses. The informal workers suffer heavily, through the evaporation of opportunities for income, employment, education and social advancement.
The media, the (PSDB-controlled) Federal Police and the Judiciary tightened the screws in 2014, and successive corruption scandals have come to light. The Federal Police’s ongoing Lava Jato operation has unveiled a large corruption network centred on Petrobras and including cartels, fraud and illegal funding for several parties. Blanket media coverage focusing on the PT alone badly dented the government’s credibility. Several politicians and party cadres were jailed, followed by some of the country’s most prominent businessmen, but only those supporting the government. A two-pronged campaign was launched to restore the right to power regardless of the elections. On the one hand, the media suggested that the PT was uniquely corrupt and corrupting, and that the businesses aligned with it had violated the law and perverted democracy. On the other hand, the police and the judicial system have sought to throttle the party. The message was clear: anyone funding the PT illegally will be imprisoned; their companies will be destroyed and the shareholders will pay dearly. Having survived for years through the favours of the rich at the expense of the militancy of the poor, the PT was in a bind. It had no explanation to offer, no programme to advance, and no strategy to climb out of the hole.
The attack against Rousseff and the PT forged a right-wing mass opposition demanding the ‘end of corruption’ and ‘Dilma’s impeachment’, even though there is no legal justification for it. Examination of the opposition’s grievances leads to a laundry list of unfocused and conflicting dissatisfactions articulated by expletives rather than logic: the demand for the President’s impeachment has no legal substance. The process is an attempted political coup d’état: the PSDB and the media refuse to accept the outcome of the 2014 elections and they have decided to depose the President and restore the hegemony of globalised neoliberalism regardless of Constitutional niceties.
At this point in time, it is impossible to predict whether or not Dilma will be impeached or forced to resign. Underpinning this uncertainty is the impasse between social forces defending an inclusive Constitution and those imposing an excluding neoliberal system of accumulation. These disputes emerge through a dysfunctional political system, a distorted economy and a regressive social structure: a democracy without legitimate sources of party funds, a hollowed out manufacturing base supported by large-scale agribusiness, an economy without prospects of generating quality jobs for its workers or capacity to distribute income in a fiscally sustainable manner, and élites clinging to their privileges and resenting any attempt to build an inclusive citizenship. A political hegemony resolving these impasses will not be built easily or rapidly. The agony is not over. The end is not even close.
The set image is by thierry ehrmann [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.